Defending sovereignty vs. promoting democracy?
There was an echo of George W. Bush’s democracy promotion agenda in President Donald Trump’s address to the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly. But unlike Mr. Bush, this… Read more »
Category: democratic values
Democracy in crisis – and prospects for renewal
With the advent of authoritarian leaders and the simultaneous rise of populism, representative democracy appears to be caught between a rock and a hard place, yet it is this space… Read more »
Liu Xiaobo’s legacy will shape China’s future, forum told
China’s government should ensure that the law grants access to independent legal counsel and family members, as well as addressing the ill-treatment in detention and deaths in custody, the United… Read more »
China’s crackdown another step toward ‘digital totalitarian state’?
China’s crackdown on human rights activists is the most severe since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement 25 years ago, according to a new Human Rights Watch report. Beijing is systematically… Read more »
Asian democrats can help fill vacuum on democratic renewal
It is too early to know if the current democratic recession represents a blip or something more malignant, says a leading expert. “But the recession is certainly deepening,” Stanford University’s… Read more »
A populist foreign policy for ‘Defending the West’?
Does a “clash between internationalists urging the traditional US leadership role in the world and advocates of an ‘America First’ approach” reported by Reuters presage an impending foreign policy crisis?… Read more »
Limit democracy to save liberalism?
While illiberal democracy is certainly worrying, many of its critics fundamentally misunderstand how democracy’s historical relationship with liberalism and how democracy has traditionally developed, notes Sheri Berman, a professor of… Read more »
Crisis of confidence roiling liberal democracies?
In the wake of the recent Group of 20 summit, some commentators claimed that the chief threat to liberal democracy was not from the aggressively illiberal despots of Russia, North… Read more »
Problem in rooting foreign policy in Western values
Invoking the roots of Western civilization, President Trump’s Poland speech recalled the core values undergirding modern democracy, some observers contend. “Western” values are universal values, and Trump affirmed their universality… Read more »
Western values not exclusive to ‘the West’
In the heady days of the Cold War, “the West” referred to the so-called free world — a liberal democratic order, notes Ivan Krastev (left), the chairman of the Center… Read more »